A friend in a very blue part of the country recently sent me an email describing his experience with much younger progressives singing the praises of rising political stars Beto O’Rourke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
His very basic question — “What have they done?” — is met with stony silence and barely restrained frustration. The message in their silence is implicit: You’re too old to understand that matching words with deeds doesn’t matter, accomplishments don’t matter. What matters is who they are — young, hip, fresh, unencumbered – and how they talk.
Reminds me of a dinner party my wife and I attended in 2008 after Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy. The dinner guests were thrilled. I listened to them and then asked if anyone had actually met Obama or dealt with him. None had.
I had known Obama, though, for many years and had helped conduct a training course that he attended before he began a short, uninspired few years in organizing. I said that he was smart, reflective, and skilled at speaking, just as he appeared to be. But I had concerns because he was a product of the Cook County Democratic machine. He had served in the Illinois Senate as a loyal member of that machine, won his U.S. Senate seat with the same support, and had never led any institution of any scale or importance.
OPINION
I described to my dinner companions how several of my colleagues from Chicago met with then-Sen. Obama in Washington about…
